the vinyl lovefest must end

If you missed it, I'm a music geek. (And, also, just a regular geek). I'm the first to confess this: I spend more time thinking about, reading about, talking about, and playing music than anything else in my little universe. This includes reading several geeky online music boards. Lately, on every single one of them, the subject of records - good ol' vinyl - has come up. And several dozen people espouse their love for vinyl, and talk about searching out all kinds of rarities, and how great vinyl is.

This is a wake up call: vinyl is not great. Here are 5 reasons why you should get over the vinyl lovin':

#1 - Sound quality - This is the biggest reason. People who tell you that music sounds better on vinyl are nuts - or they're just trying too hard to be cool. It just sounds like music on vinyl, with those annoying scratchy record player sounds. And, if it's an old recording, you get the bonus of lots of detracting background noise. The only people who have any reason whatsoever to enjoy this sound are baby boomers, and that's for nostalgia and only nostalgia.

#2 - The album cover artwork is pretty. But it wasn't "killed" by CDs. There were these things that were quite popular for several years called cassette tapes. These little beauties have covers approximately 2x4" in size - try placing any overly artistic images on that. CDs also contain album art. Whether you like it or not is subjective, but I've seen more bad vinyl album covers than good ones in my lifetime, too.

#3 - Several of these vinyl-lovers buy records, and then use modern day technology to transfer the files to their mp3 libraries, for listening on their computers and/or mp3 players of choice. If you're telling me vinyl is superior sound quality (which it's not) then you should be anti-mp3, because that's completely compressed sound quality. And if you're looking for digital files, you're going to not only get better sound quality from a CD, but also you will save space and money, and not look like a pretentious poser.

#4 - Cost. Vinyl is usually more expensive than digital these days, because it's a novelty and harder to find. And because the people who think they're getting something special are suckers.

#5 - You don't even need vinyl to scratch anymore, if you're into that. You can get digital files and equipment that make all the neat sounds without tearing the crap out of the record you just spent way too much on.

The ONLY reason I can see buying anything on vinyl is if you collect music and it was ONLY released on vinyl. And even then, you should be able to download it from somewhere - this is the internet.

marketing 101

Today I'm working on marketing to prospective clients. I have a list of 7000+ businesses. The company that provided the list was kind enough to break out what they think are the top 200. Now I'm trying to narrow down my top 100 and then top 50.

So the first stop is Ye' Old Internet, where Google is your friend. I actually started Googling these companies last week.

If you're going into business, or maybe you're already in business, I have some advice:

Before you name your company, no matter how clever or catchy or original you think your name is, Google it. If you got an entire first page with other companies bearing that same name, think of something else. Be original. Stand out. Let people actually be able to find you.

Then, get a web presence. I don't care who you cater to, what you sell, whatever, you need a web site. People want to research you on the web. They don't want to have to talk to other people or look you up in journals or magazines or books. If they can't find you online, they probably won't try too hard to find you.

So my top 100 and top 50 potential clients aren't the top 100 from my list - they are the top 100 from my list with web sites I could find. And they are getting cool little gifts that probably have no bearing on whether or not they actually do business with me.